How a Space Telescope's Accidental Discovery Overturned Everything we Thought we Knew About Lightning Storms

The GRAPES-3 muon telescope in Ooty, India was designed to study the cosmos--events that took place millions of years ago at distances that confound the human imagination. What researchers didn't expect was that it would also shed light not just on cosmic history, but on a mystery much closer to home: the massive power hidden in a thundercloud.Benjamin Franklin was the first to produce a definitive study on a thunderhead's electric charge*. With his famous kite-in-a-thunderstorm experiment, alon...